PMotS Spotlight: Bad 'n Boosted
| « Previous Article | Next Article » |
Art by Kiwi.
Introduction
With the naming originating from the combination of pet projects and game mods, as that may imply, Pet Mods are metagames that contain arbitrary changes at the will of the community involved, allowing changes without being formally bound to a set rule or tiering policy unlike most other sections in Smogon. Solomods are a subset that only have editing involvement from the council in charge, in practice covering personal fangames and metagames with specific changes that wouldn't fit elsewhere.
A Pet Mod of the Season refers to the highlighted period in which a carefully hand-picked Pet Mod gets a usable ladder temporarily in the main Pokémon Showdown! server. This is often difficult for Pet Mods, as technical difficulties often make it difficult to have a fully working teambuilder, since any changes or additions from the usual unmodified metagames aren't directly visible in the teambuilder, causing an entry barrier that is only mitigated by using Pet Mods' personal Pokémon Showdown! client where matches are normally manually held outside this period. However, Bad 'n Boosted is sufficiently simple for this to barely be an issue.
Bad 'n Boosted is an Ubers-based metagame where the catch is that the base 70 or lower stat is doubled for all Pokémon, causing a wide variety of Pokémon to gain niches by having considerably increased stats, resulting in a surprisingly power-crept metagame where over 700 BST is often the norm. While similar to the Other Metagame 350 Cup in the fact that low-BST Pokémon are buffed to ridiculously high BSTs, certain high-BST Pokémon are buffed alongside the LCs and NFEs.
Banned Pokémon
Stats: 95 / 120 / 120 / 101 / 120 / 105 [661 BST]
Espathra is typically held back by its poor stats, making it difficult to accumulate boosts between Calm Mind and Speed Boost to enable a sweep, but with that no longer being an issue, alongside the versatility to pick its counterplay by the combination of Terastallizing and Tera Blast, it became quite unfavorable to justify its stance in the tier.
Stats: 120 / 130 / 130 / 134 / 114 / 140 [768 BST]
With Ghost being a potent offensive typing, Polteageist's blitzing Speed tier alongside the threat of Shell Smash, Stored Power, and Tera Blast Fighting heavily limited its counterplay to dedicated checks like Sableye and Hisuian Zoroark, as well as soft checks in Tera Dark Pokémon like Dondozo, overall leading to the quite disliked centralization in the metagame that caused its ban.
Stats: 140 / 95 / 130 / 85 / 130 / 121 [701 BST]
Cyclizar was most known for its spam of Shed Tail made possible by Regenerator, but now it was backed up by incredible bulk and the potential to pass a Substitute with significantly more HP to allies. This made offensive teams too hard to handle for bulkier teams, justifying Cyclizar's removal from the metagame. It has since been replaced by its fellow Shed Tail user Orthworm, which lacks sufficient means of recovery but is faster and bulkier than Cyclizar ever was. If Shed Tail ever gets banned, Cyclizar could see a return as a reliable Rapid Spin user and pivot.
Stats: 136 / 140 / 92 / 100 / 132 / 84 [684 BST]
Araquanid is usually known as a Sticky Web setter with some situational uses beyond that, but with bloated stats alongside Water Bubble, Araquanid instead becomes an extremely powerful wallbreaker, having the potential to 2HKO even the sturdiest checks like Toxapex and Koraidon with Choice Band Tera Water Liquidation after Stealth Rock or a Defense drop, ultimately leading to its ban after a voted survey, as this proved to be unhealthy by demanding minimal momentum and prediction from the Araquanid user. Araquanid's higher-than-usual Speed tier also enabled Choice Scarf sets with rain support, allowing it to remain threatening against offense teams as well in exchange for being more limited as a wallbreaker.
Top Threats
While Bad 'n Boosted is still populated by the main Ubers threats like Zacian-C and Arceus, a couple underrated and unfamiliar names have surfaced as reliable metagame staples.
Stats: 100 / 126 / 152 / 106 / 142 / 70 [696 BST]
Toxapex @ Heavy-Duty Boots- Ability: Regenerator
- Tera Type: Flying / Steel
- EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
- Impish Nature
- - Liquidation / Infestation
- - Toxic / Poison Jab
- - Haze
- - Recover
Toxapex is an extremely meta-defining Pokémon in Bad 'n Boosted, with its solid mixed bulk, which is relatively even higher than Arceus's, alongside Regenerator allowing it to make a core with Koraidon, enabling a wide variety of balance team structures as a wall that also counteracts the trend of bulky setup sweepers and retains a lot of longevity thanks to Regenerator. While Toxapex can make progress with indirect damage, a lack of setup still results in Toxapex having passivity issues the opposing team can take advantage of, keeping Toxapex relatively in check as a welcoming aspect of the tier.
Stats: 100 / 135 / 115 / 85 / 100 / 135 [670 BST]
|
|
Koraidon @ Choice Scarf / Choice Band
Even though it doesn't receive any benefit from the gimmick of the metagame, Koraidon remains a potent aspect of it, with its solid stats and ability that allows it to fill a wide variety of offensive roles, ranging from the common niche as a Choice-locked wallbreaker or pivot, to a setup sweeper, to even a more dedicated yet niche sun setter with Heat Rock for Pokémon such as Bellsprout and Choice Specs Gouging Fire to take advantage of. Like with other metagames, Koraidon's Swords Dance set still raises concerns, as it can still overwhelm a good portion of the metagame with Tera Fire Flare Blitz after a boost, but such a set is limited by only having one chance at sweeping due to the chip damage and the momentum required to set up limiting its longevity.
Stats: Stats: 100 / 150 / 100 / 150 / 100 / 150 [750 BST]
Deoxys @ Life Orb- Ability: Pressure
- EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Tera Type: Psychic
- Naive Nature
- - Psycho Boost
- - Focus Blast
- - Ice Beam
- - Nasty Plot
Deoxys is usually outclassed by Deoxys-A, but this is one of the few metagames where Deoxys is more viable than it. While the tier has quite an increased power level that still makes Deoxys's resulting statline too lacking to use it as a wall, the capability to not easily be OHKOed by any revenge killer whatsoever with priority makes Deoxys way more reliable as a setup sweeper, especially as its Speed tier gets above the crowded yet high Speed tier of base 140, ensuring that Deoxys moves before almost the entire metagame.
Stats: 100 / 140 / 160 / 140 / 160 / 90 [790 BST]
Deoxys-Defense @ Leftovers- Ability: Pressure
- Tera Type: Poison
- EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
- Bold Nature
- IVs: 0 Atk
- - Calm Mind
- - Stored Power
- - Recover
- - Thunderbolt
As the Pokémon with the highest BST in the tier, Deoxys-D makes the most of its obscene stats to act as a bulky setup sweeper that can be difficult to stop, between Pressure halving the chances to overwhelm it with a critical hit and Tera Poison removing the concern for bad poisoning. Thunderbolt in particular eases the matchup against checks like Toxapex, Skarmory, and Ho-Oh, in total resulting in Deoxys-D being a notable asset for balance teams.
Stats: 130 / 130 / 120 / 130 / 95 / 110 [715 BST]
- Espeon @ Leftovers
- Ability: Magic Bounce
- Tera Type: Fairy
- EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
- Bold Nature
- IVs: 0 Atk
- - Calm Mind
- - Stored Power / Psychic Noise
- - Alluring Voice
- - Morning Sun
Despite having a lower BST than Deoxys-D, Espeon is seen as the superior Stored Power sweeper, as it has the advantage of Magic Bounce to stop Taunt and phazing along with Fairy-type coverage to beat Alolan Persian, Umbreon, and anything that uses Tera Dark against it. Strong Steel-types such as Necrozma-DM, Zacian-C, and Bisharp can muscle through as long as Espeon has not sufficiently boosted yet.
Stats: 130 / 80 / 140 / 80 / 140 / 140 [710 BST]
Skarmory @ Rocky Helmet / Leftovers- Ability: Sturdy
- Tera Type: Dragon
- EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD or 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
- Impish Nature / Jolly Nature
- - Roost
- - Roar / Taunt
- - Spikes / Iron Defense
- - Brave Bird / Body Press
With a gained access to high special bulk, even higher physical bulk, and a Speed tier that, even uninvested, is above base 94, Skarmory can act as a mixed wall; this capability complements its access to a fast Taunt that can even be customized with full Speed investment, as it has the sheer mixed bulk to afford doing so. Skamory also has the potential to act as a bulky wincon with the IronPress combination in some structures, but it can also stick to the more standard sets with Spikes and phazing, with Roar in particular having the niche of phazing Brambleghast. However, Skarmory's heavy reliance on status moves makes it rather vulnerable to Magic Bounce users like Espeon and Hatterene, as well as Ghost-types that don't mind Body Press like Flutter Mane.
Stats: 150 / 100 / 115 / 130 / 130 / 70 [695 BST]
- Dondozo @ Leftovers
- Ability: Unaware
- Tera Type: Fairy / Dark
- EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
- Careful Nature
- - Rest
- - Sleep Talk
- - Curse
- - Liquidation
Even though a solid base 130 Special Attack may imply that Dondozo would become a special attacker, its special movepool is so poor to the point that this stat still remains practically irrelevant, but Dondozo's drastic increase in Special Defense does result in a role shift to a mixed wall, making the most of Curse to complement its relatively weaker Defense to become a wincon for stall and balance teams alike. Even while having to compete with other Water-types like Toxapex, Quaxwell, and Arceus-Water, Dondozo's Unaware ability still enables it to be easy to justify on a team, as bulky setup sweepers like Espeon are a trend in the metagame and especially since this can be supported further with Tera Dark to not be vulnerable to Stored Power, but Tera Fairy also finds use to enable mind games on foes like Koraidon and Vibrava.
Stats: 136 / 128 / 120 / 111 / 120 / 117 [732 BST]
|
|
Although Salazzle is normally extremely unreliable at using Corrosion out of poor bulk, that is no longer an issue. Corrosion instead becomes Salazzle's strongest asset as an anti-meta stallbreaker, often weakening and stalling out defensive cores and forcing out status absorbers like Breloom and Pawmot; this is further complemented by Fire Lash to ease 2HKOs while also forcing switches to find chances to set Substitute or hinder foes further with Knock Off. Additionally, Salazzle can run Dragon Dance to pressure teams through more offensive means, being one of the few physical sweepers to take on Galarian Weezing and Skarmory one-on-one. If it Terastallizes, Salazzle can beat Dondozo and Toxapex using Encore, and it's even able to inflict poison on Toxapex through Corrosion. Salazzle still struggles against checks like Naclstack, Dragonair, and Espeon, as it lacks enough offensive pressure and is unable to properly status them.
Final Thoughts
With Pet Mods often ranging from quite complicated changes that redefine the perception of many to rather simple premises with drastic implications like this one, Bad 'n Boosted provides an interesting metagame to try out!
| « Previous Article | Next Article » |